Listen: Spectacular First Track from M83's 'Oblivion' Score Revealed

It's finally time. Our first listen to a song from M83's highly anticipated score for Joe Kosinski's Oblivion, the upcoming sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise. This is one of those moments I've been waiting for ever since first reporting last June that French electronic band M83 would be scoring. We've been curious if the music used in the trailers was M83's work or not, but it doesn't sound like it. Especially after listening to "StarWaves", the track released today. I mean whoa, this is great, and it's not even 4 minutes of music. I can't wait to hear the rest! But, unfortunately, the full score will not be available to buy & stream until April.

Below you'll find the embedded player from Rolling Stone (via The Film Stage) to listen to this first track, which really builds into something tremendous in the second half. Without having seen the entire movie yet, I don't want to try envision where this fits in until I see it, but it's still exciting to listen to this early anyway.

As you can see on the album cover, the Oblivion score is credited to both Anthony Gonzalez and Joseph Trapanese, playing as M83. Rolling Stone describes this "StarWaves" track a "slow-burning, celestial cut that expands into a chorus of all-consuming synths." I'm hooked already, looking forward to seeing the movie and hearing the album. The soundtrack for Oblivion will be released April 9th on Back Lot Records.

Kosinski's Oblivion (also known as Horizons) stars Tom Cruise as Jack Harper, plus Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Zoe Bell, Andrea Riseborough, Melissa Leo and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Living and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, Jack's soaring existence is brought crashing down when he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he knows and puts the fate of humanity in his hands. Kosinski has developed this for years, with a writing credit along with William Monahan. Universal Pictures currently has Oblivion scheduled to open exclusively in IMAX theaters on April 19th. See the trailer here.

Reader Feedback - 22 Comments

1

That was absolutely breathtaking!

Nick on Mar 6, 2013

2

I'm looking forward to Kosinski's career - he really values music's role in his films. No bullshit stock orchestra that you don't even notice.
I would like to re-score Final Fantasy SW with this soundtrack, that movie could have used something more like this. Not sure why that came to mind, I guess the movies may be somewhat similar?

OfficialJab on Mar 6, 2013

3

The most damning thing they did to that movie was call it 'Final Fantasy', as it's own it's a pretty interesting sci-fi film, and for the time the animation style certainly was cool. But the fact that it had that title created a lot of expectations in fans of the games...and that's the only criteria they used to judge the film 'It was nothing like any of the games!'...it's a shame.

He gets the music and visuals right. Now if only the story and script matched that quality.

castingcouch on Mar 8, 2013

7

The story was outstanding, it wasn't communicated very well, though.
A man is trapped for a decade in a computerized world that he and his clone created, where he discovered a naturally occurring life form which his clone cruelly exterminated because he inherited his creator's naivete about perfection. The man's son discovers his father's computer world, and his entrance creates an opportunity for the clone to discover the world outside of his.

Truly epic! I think that just like Daft Punks score of Tron: Legacy, this will MAKE the movie.

AySpergs362 on Mar 6, 2013

15

100% agree. Adagio for Tron knocked me dead.
Unfortunately it was overlooked at the Oscars, but there were many great film scores that year, and most people probably just thought it was all just bleep-bloop electronica since Derezzed took the spotlight.

OfficialJab on Mar 6, 2013

16

I'm stoked about this as well. Been a huge M83 fan for many years and I'm more than a little shocked (but happy) to see them doing great stuff like this.